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Author Topic: Can you add to the list of sextant numbers?  (Read 551268 times)

John Kada

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Re: Can you add to the list of sextant numbers?
« Reply #120 on: October 04, 2012, 10:32:54 PM »

The Smithsonian has several K&E Bubble sextants in its collection; at this hour I'm not up to another post but it will be interesting to see how well the SurveyingAntiques.com table dates them. If anyone else is up to the task tonight, please post...
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Martin X. Moleski, SJ

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Re: Can you add to the list of sextant numbers?
« Reply #121 on: October 05, 2012, 08:13:26 AM »

John, I've added your remarks to the sextant article.

Please take a moment to learn how to link directly to a Forum post.  Finding "post #99" in a thread is tedious, whereas clicking on a link to post #99 is as easy as it gets.  Your readers will thank you for making your argument easy to follow; I will thank you for going the extra mile; and Bartles and James would thank you for your support, too, if they were involved in the life of the Forum.   ;)
LTM,

           Marty
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John Kada

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Re: Can you add to the list of sextant numbers?
« Reply #122 on: October 07, 2012, 12:39:40 AM »

I’ve dug up information on several more K&E sextants that give me good confidence in the K&E manufacturing date table (I will call this the K&E time scale for brevity from here on) and in the assignment of 1918 as the manufacture date of Brandis sextant 1542.

The Smithsonian has three early bubble sextants that are modified Keuffel and Esser nautical sextants:

One is USNO #405, which is already in the Ameliapedia table. The Smithsonian’s description says this sextant was made around 1908, but I suspect this date comes from the same K& E time scale rather than from direct knowledge of the history of the instrument, and won’t consider it further here.

The descriptions of the other two sextants at the Smithsonian web site are as follows:

Catalogue number:
NASM 1966-398
Inscriptions:
"KEUFFEL & ESSER CO. / NEW YORK / 57321 / PATENT PENDING" and "BUBBLE OCTANT MARK II, MOD. 2 / BUREAU OF AERO. U.S. NAVY / SERIAL NUMBER 8 / MADE BY / KEUFFEL & ESSER CO. N.Y."
Discussion:
The Mark II, Model 2 was designed by Noel Davis, modified by Keuffel & Esser, and produced for the U.S. Navy. This example was made before the issuance of the Radford-Davis patent in January 1930. It’s provenance is unknown.
Ref: T. C. Lonnquest, "Operation and Adjustment of the Mark II Model 2 Octant," Bureau of Aeronautics, Navy Department, Technical Note No. 207 (Nov. 22, 1929).
L. Radford and N. Davis, "Sextant," U.S. patent #1,7

Catalogue number:
AF*59058-N
Inscriptions:
"BUBBLE OCTANT MARK II, MOD. 2 / BUREAU OF AERONAUTICS U.S. NAVY / SERIAL NUMBER 2-29 / MADE BY / KEUFFEL & ESSER CO. / NEW YORK / 57312 / PAT. PENDING"
Discussion:
The Mark II, Model 2 was designed by Noel Davis, modified by Keuffel & Esser, and produced for the U.S. Navy. This example was the 2nd one made in 1929. P. V. H. Weems donated it to the Smithsonian in 1963.
Ref: T. C. Lonnquest, "Operation and Adjustment of the Mark II Model 2 Octant," Bureau of Aeronautics, Navy Department, Technical Note No. 207 (Nov. 22, 1929).
Lawrence Radford and Noel Davis, "Sextant," U.S. patent #1,743,979



The K&E time scale gives manufacture dates of 1930 for both these sextants, and if these were new when they received their bubble modifications then the K&E time scale is off by one year; not perfect agreement, but not too bad. We have more information about these two sextants from the USNO Annual reports for fiscal years 1930 and 1931, which discuss the development of these sextants and tell us that the first 3 Mark II, model 2s were delivered to the USN prior to the end of fiscal year 1930 on June 30, 1930.

A third K&E sextant can be found in a M.S. thesis titled ‘Investigation of Eccentricity of Sextant No. 10191 Keuffel & Esser’ published In May, 1911 authored by a U. Cal. graduate student named Wallace Alford Newlin, available here. The K&E time scale gives this sextant a 1905 manufacture date, putting a six year old sextant in Wallace’s hands. The dating of this sextant again is quite reasonable, though it doesn’t provide as rigorous a test of the K&E time scale as the Smithsonian bubble sextants did.

The fourth sextant is where things gets interesting. An auction web site recently listed a sextant with K&E number 36961, N.O. number 3227 (by the way, this is the first N.O. number between 3000 and 3999 – see this post). The K&E time scale gives this sextant a 1918 manufacture date. Can this be correct? Remember that we came up with a 1918 date of manufacture for K&E sextant 37548, N.O. number 1555 on the Ameliapedia table. Can N.O. numbers 1555 and 3227 really have been issued with a year of each other? More than 1600 new N.O. numbers (i.e. 3227 minus 1555) would have had to have been issued in 1918.

I think the answer is ‘Yes’, and to explain I refer to the table I've attached which gives the number of eccentricity tests performed each fiscal year from 1916 to 1919 as reported in the Annual Reports of the USNO. Note that the USNO annual reports are for work done during the fiscal year rather than the calendar year; fiscal years ran from July 1 to June 30 during this period. In only one of these years (FY 1919) does an annual report explicitly tell us the number of new sextants that were eccentricity tested; in all the other years we are only told how many new and repaired sextants received eccentricity tests. We can make guesses about the number of new vs. repaired sextants tested, but here I will only using the information explicitly given in the reports.

You can see looking at the eccentricity test table that 2351 new sextants underwent eccentricity testing between 7/1/18 and 6/30/19. And while we don’t know the break-down of new and repaired sextants given eccentricity test over the same time period the year before, surely a good fraction of the 818 sextants tested were new sextants. So, it seems to me the fact that the K&E time scale gives the same manufacture year for sextants with N.O. numbers 1555 and 3227 makes sense; what we’re seeing, I think, is the arrival of the tsunami of new sextants at the USNO during calendar year 1918. In earlier calendar years too few new sextants were coming in for two such widely disparate N.O. numbers to be issued in the same year; after the armistice the Navy quickly stopped buying new navigation equipment so very few new sextants were purchased after 1919. 1918 was sort of the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary in the USNO sextant number chronology, the year that the number of N.O. numbers issued exploded, and our K&E timescale has allowed us to correctly date it.

The other attached Table summarizes the long-winded discussion I just went through.

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Now, if I can only learn how to use the Table embedding tool I won't need to attach my tables as jpegs...
« Last Edit: October 18, 2012, 10:19:34 PM by John Kada »
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John Kada

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Re: Can you add to the list of sextant numbers?
« Reply #123 on: October 07, 2012, 10:17:13 PM »

The Keuffel & Esser sextants just keep coming. On this auction site is listed a Keuffel & Esser sextant with K&E number 33839/ N.O. number 664; the eccentricity test certificate is dated 3/19/37. The K&E Serial number list gives this a 1916 manufacturing date.

From the 6 K&E sextants we know about that have Naval Observatory numbers, the chronology of issuance of N.O. numbers looks as shown in the attached table. But the key points were made in previous posts -- we've pinned down the date of issuance of N.O. number 1542 to the year 1918 pretty well, I think. Now it's on to Box 493 of the records of the U.S. Shipping Board!...
« Last Edit: October 08, 2012, 12:43:09 AM by John Kada »
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John Kada

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Re: Can you add to the list of sextant numbers?
« Reply #124 on: October 08, 2012, 12:41:21 AM »

This nautical antiques dealer recently sold a Buff and Buff sextant, N.O. number 1908, Buff & Buff serial number 13085 (not quite sure about the last digit, it could be a 2 or an 8...). I can find no equivalent dating table available for Buff & Buff sextants, but based on the three B&Bs in the Ameliapedia table and this one, I'm guessing B&B serial numbers tended to increase monotonically with calendar year. Note that in the Ameliapedia table Buff & Buff 13069 has an N.O. number of 1248 while this one, 13085, has an N.O. number of 1908. Maybe these two Buff & Buffs got separated from each other in the '1918 tsunami' I spoke of two posts ago?...

« Last Edit: October 08, 2012, 12:54:18 AM by John Kada »
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John Kada

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Re: Can you add to the list of sextant numbers?
« Reply #125 on: October 08, 2012, 08:18:20 AM »

The Smithsonian has three Brandis surveying instruments in its collection:

- A Wye level, Brandis #531, which they seem date to between 1875 and 1890 based on its F. Brandis and Co. inscription and a label, which reads:
 "BRANDIS & TECKRITZ, MAKE in the most accurate manner, ALL KINDS OF MATHEMATICAL & ASTRONOMICAL INSTRUMENTS. Theodolites, Transits, Leveling Instruments, Sextants, Quadrants, Etc. Etc. All kinds of Instruments re-divided, re-paired and adjusted. No. 55 FULTON ST. NEW YORK."

- A Wye Level, Brandis #1065, which they date to 'around 1890' for reasons that they don't make clear. I think it is once again the label, which says Brandis Manufacturing Co. New York. In the 1902 Brandis catalog they call themselves F.E. Brandis, Sons & Co.;
 
- A Transit, Brandis # 1569, which the Smithsonian suggests was made no later than 1916 because it also has F.E. Brandis, Sons, & Co. label. According to the Smithsonian, Brandis was in business under the F. E. Brandis, Sons & Co. name from 1890-1916;

Are there a few well-dated Brandis surveying instruments with Brandis numbers in 1500-5000 range out there in other museum collections or elsewhere?

Do we know exactly how Brandis identifies itself in any of our Ameliapedia sextants, i.e., 'F.E. Brandis, Sons, and Co.', 'F. Brandis and Co.', 'Brandis Manufacturing Co., New York', or something else?

More potential information appears to be out there for dating the N.O. number series ...

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note added: According to the discussion of the Pensacola sextant box in  Ameliapedia, that box has the number 116 handwritten on the front, and the numbers 3547 and 173 handwritten on the bottom. From the information I've been digging up I would say an N.O. number of 173 doesn't jibe well with a Brandis number of 3547. N.O. number 173 is looking to be a pre-WWI N.O. number, perhaps a pre-1900 number, and the Brandis serial number (if there was a single serial number series for all its products) seems more likely to be of WWI vintage.
« Last Edit: October 13, 2012, 08:15:52 PM by John Kada »
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John Kada

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Re: Can you add to the list of sextant numbers?
« Reply #126 on: October 19, 2012, 12:24:29 AM »

This is going to be a long post. According to a brief history of Brandis given on the Smithsonian web site, Brandis slightly changed its name three times during its existence and therefore the way the Brandis company name is marked on a sextant can potentially tell us something about when it was manufactured.

“Frederick Ernest Brandis (1845–1916) was born in Germany, came to the United States in 1858, worked for Stackpole & Brothers for a few years, and then opened his own instrument shop in 1871. The firm became F. Brandis & Co. in 1875, F. E. Brandis, Sons & Co. in 1890, and Brandis & Sons Mfg. Co. in 1916. The Pioneer Instrument Company purchased control of Brandis in 1922, and sold it to the Bendix Aviation Corporation in 1928. The manufacture of Brandis instruments ceased in 1932.”

So, we have three Brandis eras:

The ‘F. Brandis & Co.’ era, from 1875 to 1890;
The ‘F. E. Brandis, Sons, & Co.’ era, from 1890 to 1916;
The ‘Brandis & Sons Mfg. Co.’ era, from 1916 to 1932.

I checked all of the sextants in the Ameliapedia table that had active ebay links and also the Brandis sextants in the Smithsonian’s collection to see how the Brandis name is marked on those sextants. What I found is summarized in Table 1. In the first three columns I’ve listed the Naval Observatory number, the Brandis serial number, and the wording of the Brandis name stamped into the sextant; some of these name markings I could read myself while in other cases I had to rely on what is stated by the vendor or by the Smithsonian. Most of the ebay vendors are clear enough in their descriptions that I think the information in the table is accurate, but I provide the caveat that the name descriptions provided for NO #1146 and NO 4485 are a bit vague; there used to be photos of #4485 on the vendor’s web site that might have allowed us to read the name ourselves, but unfortunately the pictures have been removed.

Note that I’ve also included in Table 1 three sextants for which I have incomplete information. These are the 1918 Mt. Baker eclipse observation party sextant (Brandis #3257), a sextant listed in the Ameliapedia table (N.O. number #2975) that was used on a seaplane flight across the Atlantic Ocean in 1919, and a sextant in the Smithsonian’s collection (Brandis # 3193); the partial information available for these sextants still makes them worth including here.

All of the sextants for which there is name information are of the ‘Brandis & Sons Mfg Co.’ type and thus it would appear they were manufactured no earlier than 1916, and thus 1916 would seem to be the earliest year that these sextants could have been given their Naval Observatory numbers. Since Brandis stopped making sextants by 1932, we can confidently say that they were given their N.O. numbers no later than 1932, but I think we can assign an even earlier ‘no later than’ date with reasonable confidence based on what the Naval Observatory annual reports tell us. The annual report for 1919 tells us that the US Navy had a glut of navigational equipment on hand after the armistice and therefore as discussed here, the Naval Observatory transferred some of its unneeded navigational equipment to the merchant fleet. This suggests to me that the USN didn’t have a need to buy many of sextants after 1919, and what I read in USNO annual reports published after 1922 bears this out (unfortunately I don’t have the ’21 and ’22 annual reports). The 1922 USNO Annual Report indicates that 100 new ‘high-grade’ sextants were purchased that year and reports for the years 1923-1927 consistently say something along the lines of “Owing to the supply at hand practically no new instruments were purchased”. The 1928 annual report tells us a large quantity of navigational equipment was transferred from the Naval Observatory to the Washington Navy Yard to be sold as surplus.  It isn’t until the USNO Annual Report of 1931 that there is once again a mention of new sextants being purchased, but even then only 20 of them.  I think, based what the USNO tell us, it is reasonable to assume that few Brandis sextants were purchased by the Navy after 1923 and therefore it is reasonable to assume that nearly any Brandis sextants we're likely to see was assigned its  N.O. number no later than 1923. We can assign even earlier ‘no later than’ dates to several of the sextants in Table 1 because we have additional information about their whereabouts. Three of them have eccentricity certificates dated earlier than 1923 (see the fourth column of table), hence these three sextants must have been given their N.O. numbers no later than the year indicated by their eccentricity certificates. The ‘no later than’ year of the sextant used by the 1918 Mt. Baker eclipse observation party can be safely assumed to be 1918. Combining the ‘no earlier than’ and ‘no later than’ dates worked out above gives us the date ranges listed in column 5 for assignment of N.O. numbers to these sextants.

Note that the table lists three Brandis surveying instruments that are in the Smithsonian’s collection of surveying instruments; these instruments don’t have N.O. numbers but they do have Brandis serial numbers and it is interesting to see how their serial numbers and dates of manufacture fit in with those of the sextants (see note below the fold). The Brandis surveying instruments appear to pre-date any of the sextants and all three of them have N.O. numbers that are less than those of any of the sextants, as one would expect if there was a single serial number series for all of Brandis’ products.

Table 2 (attached) consolidates the N.O. numbers and dates of the Brandis sextants with those of the six Keuffel & Esser sextants from the Keuffel&Esser production dates table in Ameliapedia; there is also a Buff & Buff sextant which I include because it has a N.O. number (#1065) and can be given a ‘no later’ date of 1918 based on its eccentricity certificate.
 
A fairly consistent picture seems to emerge for the chronology of issuance of Naval Observatory numbers. It looks like the Naval Observatory number series increased very slowly prior to WWI, reached the 600s in 1916, and then rapidly increased to at least the low 3000’s by 1918 and the high 4700s by no later than 1923. This chronology agrees nicely with the arrival of the tsunami of new sextants for eccentricity testing 1918-1919 that we learn from the USNO annual reports .

Placing 1542 and 3500, pair of numbers that Gallagher reported on the sextant box found with the castaway’s remains, in the appropriate place in this table, it appears that if Gallagher’s sextant box once held a USNO sextant it was assigned its N.O. number in 1918 or 1919 and therefore this would be the earliest that our castaway could have arrived at Gardner.

As for the Brandis serial numbers, I would guess that before 1918, there was a fairly monotonic increase in Brandis serial number with N.O. number. My thinking is that until 1918, the rate of delivery of new sextants to the Observatory was fairly low and the observatory was assigning N.O. numbers to sextants essentially as quickly as they arrived from the manufacturer. But then in 1918 the Naval Observatory got slammed with the tsunami of sextants, creating a backlog of sextants in crates a warehouse somewhere; the Naval Observatory staff worked through this backlog, pulling crates out of the warehouse in no particular order with respect to sextant serial numbers. Thus a large number of Brandis sextants were assigned N.O. numbers in 1918 and 1919 with no correlation between the N.O. numbers and the Brandis serial numbers. I think we might see a fairly monotonic increase in N.O. number with Brandis serial number for N.O. numbers less than ~700, and I’d expect to see a fair number of sextants marked ‘F.E. Brandis, Sons, & Co.’ among them.

The Ameliapedia table has a Brandis sextant with NO number 362 and Brandis number 2734; if there was a monotonic increase in N.O. number with Brandis number prior to 1918, then a sextant with the N.O number 173 (the putative N.O. number of the sextant written on the Pensacola sextant box) would have a Brandis serial number that was less than ~2700, a good deal lower than the 3547 that is written on the Pensacola box. One or both of the two numbers has some other meaning.

I suspect that Tighar members might be able to check Brandis markings on some of the other sextants listed in the Ameliapedia table. It would be nice to know how the manfacture dates, N.O. numbers and Brandis serial numbers of these other sextants fit in with the chronology I’ve developed here. I’d be particularly curious to see how the sextants with N.O. numbers 362 and 845 are marked; my guess based on the trend in N.O. number with date we see in the second table is that NO #362 is old enough to be marked ‘F.E. Brandis, Sons, & Co’, while NO#845 is a sextant made in the ‘Brandis & Sons Mfg. Co.’ era.

===================the fold===============

Note on the Brandis surveying instruments: the Smithsonian says that the surveying instrument with Brandis serial number #1065 is marked ‘Brandis Manufacturing Company’, but if you look carefully at the photo of the box (the image is reversed) it reads “F.E. Brandis, Sons & Co.” thus it is of 1890-1916 vintage.

« Last Edit: October 19, 2012, 06:44:40 PM by John Kada »
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Martin X. Moleski, SJ

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Re: Can you add to the list of sextant numbers?
« Reply #127 on: October 19, 2012, 06:45:36 AM »

... it appears that if Gallagher’s sextant box once held a USNO sextant it was assigned its N.O. number in 1918 or 1919 and therefore this would be the earliest that our castaway could have arrived at Gardner. ...

Great research--thanks!

I think we have to be careful in asserting with certitude that the castaway brought the box to Gardner.  That is, of course, the simplest explanation of how the castaway's skeleton ended up near the sextant box, but at least two other scenarios can't be ruled out on a priori (purely logical) grounds:
  • The castaway may have found the sextant on the beach and brought it back to the campsite.
  • Some storm surge may have accidentally delivered the box to the vicinity of the skeleton.
LTM,

           Marty
           TIGHAR #2359A
 
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John Kada

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Re: Can you add to the list of sextant numbers?
« Reply #128 on: October 19, 2012, 09:48:25 PM »

A Buff & Buff sextant is on auction at ebay. The eccentricity certificate in the box is dated April 24, 1919, but has no N.O. number written on it. The Buff & Buff serial number written on the certificate appears to be 13024, but the last two digits are hard to read. The certificate indicates the tested sextant to be a surveying sextant.

The seller describes this sextant as being engraved with the number 1365, which sounds like it is the Naval Observatory number. One photo of the sextant shows the Buff & Buff company mark and serial number; the first two digits are clearly '13' but what follows is hard to read--to me the serial number looks to be 13138. I will send an email to the seller and see if he can clarify the Buff&Buff serial number and whether the 1365 is an N.O. number.

N.O. number #1365 being issued no later than 1919 would fit in with the trend I described in my last post.


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John Kada

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Re: Can you add to the list of sextant numbers?
« Reply #129 on: October 19, 2012, 10:11:28 PM »

And yet another sextant appears on ebay, this one marked 'Brandis & Sons, Brooklyn NY', with serial number 4522 stamped into the arc. The Naval Observatory number is 1868.

One photo shows the sextant box to have the number 4522 stencilled onto it. The eccentricity certificate neither has an N.O. number or a serial number, but it does say Brandis and gives the dates to be November 7, 1918. The tested sextant is indicated to be a surveying sextant. Like many of the eccentricity certificates, this one bears the initals 'H.K.'. I think if I got back to the USNO Annual Reports I can attach a full name to those initials.

A photo shows the inside of the box to have the name 'Capt. J.H. Klein' written on it, and the seller tells us that Capt. Klein was Lt. Commander of the US Destroyer Smith during WWI, and then Capt. Klein went on to fly in USN airships after the war.

Naval Observatory number 1868 being issued no later than 1918 fits in with the  chronology discussed three posts up in this thread.

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added note: the date range for this one would be 1916-1918
« Last Edit: October 20, 2012, 07:29:42 AM by John Kada »
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Martin X. Moleski, SJ

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Re: Can you add to the list of sextant numbers?
« Reply #130 on: October 19, 2012, 10:21:00 PM »

And yet another sextant appears on ebay, this one marked 'Brandis & Sons, Brooklyn NY', with serial number 4522 stamped into the arc. The Naval Observatory number is 1868.

Added to table.
LTM,

           Marty
           TIGHAR #2359A
 
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John Kada

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Re: Can you add to the list of sextant numbers?
« Reply #131 on: October 20, 2012, 09:43:52 AM »

A Buff & Buff sextant, USNO 1908, is listed at this nautical antiques site. One photo shows the Buff & Buff serial number to be 13088. There is no eccentricity certificate. The B&B serial number is less than 20 removed from that of the B&B with USNO 1248 already in the Ameliapedia sextant table.

There doesn't seem to be a serial number table for Buff & Buff equivalent of the one we can use to determine manufacture dates of Keuffel & Esser sextants, at least not yet.
« Last Edit: October 20, 2012, 10:32:13 AM by John Kada »
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John Ousterhout

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Re: Can you add to the list of sextant numbers?
« Reply #132 on: October 20, 2012, 12:10:01 PM »

I recently stumbled upon an ad for a British "Hughes and Son Flying Boat Sextant" from 1944, in a Deutsche Optik catalog.  Further Google research discovered that the British Flying Boats continued carrying and using these nautical-style sextants at least up to 1944!  The British numbering system used on the cases was quite different from the numbering system found on the "Gardner" box, so I'm not suggesting that this was the box found by Gallagher.  Rather, that there was a history of Nautical-type Sextants in aircraft used in British waters (which obviously might include Gardner and surrounding area).  The information I've found so far seems to indicate that the 1944 cases were bakelite, but that earlier ones were wooden.  By implication, this means that British flying boats would have been carrying wood-boxed nautical sextants before the war.
The stated purpose of these instruments on flying boats was for determining location while afloat, not in the air.  This suggests yet another way a sextant box might appear in a strange place - it got to the region by flying boat.
This also raises the question of other brands that might have been used, either by British or other nations, for similar purposes.
Cheers,
JohnO
 
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John Kada

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Re: Can you add to the list of sextant numbers?
« Reply #133 on: October 20, 2012, 04:36:59 PM »

Worthpoint lists a sextant made by A. Hurlimann, a French manufacturer that was sold in 2005.  The description indicates that it is marked with "U.S. Navy N118" and "A. Harliman a Paris (476)".

The Mystic Seaport Museum has a sextant with "A. Hurlimann a Paris (544)" inscribed into the arc that they date to 1875-1899.

A section of the USNO annual report for 1886 on page 13 titled Sextants and Octants tells us "The instruments in this class embrace 55 sextants and octants that were on hand when I took charge of this division: 2 Hurlimann sextants, forwarded through Commander F.E. Chadwick, U.S.N. form London, England;..."

While its not clear that the Worthpoint sextant is one of the two sextants mentioned in the 1886 Annual Report, it certainly seems a strong possibility.

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note added: According to the part of the Smithsonian's web site devoted to navigation instruments (which currently can only be accessed via the wayback machine), A. Hurlimann went out of business around 1900, replaced by Ponthus & Therrode.
« Last Edit: October 20, 2012, 06:52:26 PM by John Kada »
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John Ousterhout

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Re: Can you add to the list of sextant numbers?
« Reply #134 on: October 20, 2012, 08:39:44 PM »

A further thought regarding the carrying of Nautical-style sextants on flying boats:  if this was a common thing to do in flying boats in general, and especially during exploratory flights to new islands and harbors, then there should be little surprise to see a nautical sextant-type box in a picture of the navigator's station in a flying boat.  The presence of a nautical-style box should not imply that it was used for flight navigation, but rather for determining accurate positions on the water, after landing.
To take a leap of logic, such an instrument might be the preferred instrument to take ashore after landing, rather than the aeronautical flight-navigation octant.

btw, the "Hughes & Son" sextant from 20/4/44 is serial number 40768
Cheers,
JohnO
 
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